EarthBody 365

By Dr. Patricia Patterson

Welcome to EarthBody 365

Dear fellow Earth travelers,

Today you begin a journey of remembering, not learning.

The Body’s Ancient Wisdom

Your body already knows how to be in conversation with the living world. Your skin remembers rainfall, your lungs recall their ancient dialogue with plants, your bones recognize their mineral kinship with stone. These relationships didn’t begin with your birth and won’t end with your passing. They are ongoing conversations that have continued across generations, cultures, and species—conversations your body participates in whether your mind acknowledges them or not.

Reflection Question: What natural element do you feel most drawn to? Notice what happens in your body as you simply think about this element.

What we’ve forgotten, we can remember together.

Our Journey Through the Year

EarthBody 365 isn’t a curriculum to master but a cycle of practices to reawaken what industrial living has numbed.

This transition isn’t merely philosophical—it’s profoundly physical. When we move from disconnection to connection:

• Our breathing deepens
• Our senses sharpen
• Our nervous systems settle

We literally embody different beings depending on which state we inhabit.

Beyond the Five Senses Myth

One of the most profound disconnections in modern life is the belief that humans possess only five senses. This impoverished understanding has dramatically limited our recognition of how we perceive and participate in the living world.

My colleague Dr. Michael Cohen has documented at least 54 natural senses that humans possess—far beyond the conventional five. These include:

• The radiation senses (light, color, temperature perception)
• The feeling senses (touch, balance, gravity awareness)
• The chemical senses (taste, smell, hunger, thirst)
• The mental senses (pain, fear, play, emotional place, community)
• The language senses (verbal communication, aesthetic appreciation)
• The spiritual senses (reverence, wonder, conscience)

When we acknowledge and activate these multiple sensory channels, our capacity for ecological intelligence expands dramatically. Through EarthBody 365, you’ll have opportunities to awaken these dormant or underutilized senses—not as exotic skills to master, but as birthright capacities to remember.

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Our First Practice: BirdLanguage

Let’s begin with one of Earth’s oldest forms of communication—bird language.

How EarthBody 365 Was Born

The seed for EarthBody 365 was planted on a gentle spring morning in my yard. After months of wondering how to share these embodied practices more widely, I found myself drawn outside before sunrise, when the world still held the quiet of night but promised the awakening of day.

Lilacs and daffodils stood in full bloom around me, their fragrances intensifying as the morning air warmed. I settled into a chair with my notebook, still uncertain what form this project would take. That’s when I first noticed them—a pair of mourning doves perched on the fence, cooing to each other in perfect call and response patterns. Their gentle rhythm seemed to slow my breathing, softening something in my chest that had been tight for weeks.

As I relaxed into their conversation, cardinals and chickadees began adding their voices from the surrounding trees—not in competition but in complement to the doves’ melody. Without thinking, I began sketching in my notebook—not words or plans, but a circular calendar, a wheel of seasonal practices moving through the year.

The birds weren’t background noise to my thinking—they were co-creators of it. The mourning doves’ steady rhythm had regulated my nervous system; the chickadees’ bright calls had awakened clarity about structure and form. I hadn’t intellectually “decoded” their messages, but my body had responded to their communication instinctively.

That morning, EarthBody 365 took shape—not as my creation alone, but as a collaboration with these feathered neighbors. Each practice in this journey carries the imprint of that dawn chorus, reminding us that we never create in isolation, but always in relationship with the more-than-human world.

In the early dawn, when the world hovers between night and day, birds engage in what naturalists call the “dawn chorus”—a sophisticated exchange of territory, relationship, and safety information. For most of human history, our ancestors understood these messages without translation. Their bodies knew how to listen.

When we exist in a disconnected state, bird sounds become mere background noise or pleasant ambiance. We might intellectually appreciate their beauty while missing their meaning. But in a connectedstate, something remarkable happens—our bodies begin to decode these communications naturally, without analysis or interpretation.

I invite you to experience this remembering through a simple practice:

Dawn Dialogue

1. Find a comfortable spot outdoors shortly before sunrise (or any quiet morning time if dawn isn’t possible)
2. Close your eyes and take three deep breaths, feeling your body settling into place
3. Open your awareness to the first bird sounds that reach you
4. Notice where in your body you feel a response to each call—perhaps a flutter in your chest, a slight tension in your shoulders, a warming in your belly
5. Allow your body to respond naturally—this might emerge as subtle movements, changes in your breathing, or even soft vocalizations that arise without planning
6. After 10-15 minutes, journal about what your body sensed that your mind might have missed

Try This Now: Even if you’re reading indoors, pause and listen. Is there a bird sound audible, even faintly? Close your eyes for 30 seconds and notice any subtle bodily response.

When you engage in this dawn dialogue, you activate several of your 54 natural senses—particularly hearing (sense #10), but also your sense of emotional place (sense #34) and communication (sense #39). What’s happening isn’t mystical but deeply biological—your nervous system recognizing patterns it evolved to understand.

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The EarthBody Journey Ahead

Through this year of EarthBody practices, you’ll engage multiple pathways for remembering:

Somatic awareness – Learning to trust your body’s direct knowledge of ecological patterns and relationships

Creative expression – Using movement, sound, visual arts, and language as bridges between human consciousness and Earth’s intelligence

Seasonal attunement – Aligning your daily rhythms with the larger cycles that have always sustained life

Community remembering – Discovering how shared practices magnify our capacity for ecological perception

I’ve spent decades gathering these practices—from academic research, traditional knowledge keepers, and direct bodily engagement with landscapes that proved to be my most profound teachers.

Begin with curiosity rather than mastery. These practices aren’t meant to be perfected but experienced. Some will resonate immediately; others might feel strange or uncomfortable. This too is information—your body telling you where reconnection feels most needed or most challenging.

Share Your Experience: What practice are you most drawn to explore? What feels most challenging? Your insights may help others on similar journeys.

Resources for Deeper Exploration

For those wanting to dive deeper into these concepts:

• Books:
  • Reconnecting with Nature by Michael J. Cohen
  • Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
  • The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
  • Living Earth: Applied Eco-Arts in Action by Patricia Patterson
• Communities:
  • The Applied Eco-Arts Collective (www.appliedecoarts.org)
  • Project NatureConnect (www.projectnatureconnect.org)
  • NatureConnectED – Applied Eco-Arts Certification (www.natureconnect-ed.com)
• Local Resources:
  • Look for nearby nature centers, indigenous-led programs, or community gardens
  • Many libraries now offer “tools for outdoor exploration” on loan

Trust the intelligence that lives in your tissues, fluids, and breath. It carries wisdom far older than industrial thinking—wisdom we desperately need as we navigate these challenging times.

I invite you to approach each practice with both reverence and playfulness. Ecological wisdom emerges not from solemnity alone but from the same creative joy that pulses through all living systems.

Your body is already speaking Earth’s language. These practices simply help you remember how to listen.

With warmth and anticipation for our journey together,

Patricia

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Join the Conversation

• What sensory experience in nature has been most powerful for you?
• Which of the 54 senses are you most curious to explore?
• How do you notice the difference between disconnected and connected states in your own somatic experience?

Share your thoughts in the comments below or join our monthly virtual gatherings where we’ll deepen these practices together.

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“The boundary between the human and more-than-human world is not fixed but permeable and in constant flux. Our creative practices can make this permeability conscious and intentional.”